Goodreads Shows Pinterest is Not the Only Fast-Growing Social Network

By Nick Clayton

Quietly, over the last three years or so, social reading site Goodreads has grown to over 20m unique visitors a month according to Quantcast. It is probably not going to worry Facebook, but it shows there is still a demand for specialist social networks.

The site now offers e-books directly to fans. Read Write Web reports on the attraction for the growing number of self-publishing authors.

It’s not surprising that 35,000 self-promoting, social-networking authors have taken to Goodreads. The site currently has 8 million registered members who have written more than 13 million reviews and added more than 280 million books to their virtual shelves.

“Many of our early adopters were book bloggers, librarians and book club members,” says Goodreads CEO and co-founder Otis Chandler. “In fact, we have 20,000 groups on our site, such as The Sword and Laser (part of the new Geek & Sundry YouTube channel), The Next Best Book Club and small, private, meet-in-real-life groups like the Boston Book Club.”

Not everybody is happy. Some complain of similar problems to Facebook, they say their timelines are filling up with post after post. The difference is they come from word games rather than Farmville. There are also complaints, familiar to users of other social networks, of users gaming the system. This may be the price of success.

Goodreads is not the new Pinterest. It is rather more specialist than that, for better or worse. But it does show there is a niche demand which may not be met by Facebook’s supermarket approach.

Comments (3 of 3)

Iain thanks, I think so too. It's one thing to work on a peorjct enough', but you need to recognise when it's time to let it go. Always feels better once the stuff is out there too! Judy I know exactly what you mean, I think once you get used to processing your thoughts in this way it would be exceptionally hard to stop!Paul ah, so that's what it was, labour pains Thanks for your support it has been making me smile as I've been working on this to see how many parallels there between exploring the journey of the mid life and exploring your career. Explorers R Us is what I've been thinking PS thanks for the ref to the book, will pursue that-Deb I'm the same actually, and I think it's also because of the blogging outlet. But I do create a lot of fragments of writing which are not quite writing-meant-for-consumption, more half-poems or captured moments, often about what I see and notice outside of me as much as inside of me, and those are very much part of what I believe it means to journal'. Taking photos is another, and I know I remember and appreciate my days differently as a result of going about camera in hand. I'm pretty sure you do too

3:55 pm May 8, 2012

Elize wrote:

Hey David, saw you guys at ATP. Totally great both nights. Hope the rest of the gigs go well.Enjoying the blog as well. Keep up the good work.JackP.S. What is the pedal you use (the one that isn't a Rat, or is it a You Dirty Rat?).

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